Goofs:

Factual errors: The secret deal with the Soviets for the removal of the Turkish missiles was shared with all the members of the Executive Committee. In reality this deal was only known to very few people (the brothers Kennedy, Rusk and Sorensen, perhaps also McNamara). Robert Kennedy vaguely hinted at this deal in his 1968 book Thirteen Days: A memoir of the Cuban Missile crisis. It was not until 1989 that the existence of the secret deal was officially confirmed by Ted Sorensen.See more »

It is truly amazing the amount of tension Roger Donaldson manages to wring
out of this 40 year old story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, even though we
already know the ending. In the theaters this film was my choice for
picture
of the year for 2000 and on several top ten lists. Now on video, even at
second viewer it remains awesome in its power to capture the moment when
the
world almost ended. Long time Aussie transplant, Donaldson re-teams with
the
leading man in his 1987 hit No Way Out, Kevin Costner, who also serves as
co-producer, to deliver one of the best build political true to life
thrillers of all time. The film won several second tier nominations and
picked up awards for editing and its peace content (from the Political Film
society no less) plus an award for the man who is the real star of the
film,
Costner's broad as a baked bean "Baaaaaw-stin" accent aside. Canadian Bruce
Greenwood is riveting, powerful and fascinating as the man of the hour,
John
F. Kennedy, a president with the fate of the world on his hands and a
cabinet full of warhawks anxious to pull the trigger on their rack full of
A-bombs once the Soviets started planting nukes in Cuba. Greenwood eerily
channels JFK onto the screen both sounding and looking astonishingly like
the 1962 Kennedy and Steven Culp as RFK is an equally impressive mimic. At
first it is almost impossible to focus on the action whenever Greenwood is
on the screen, the impersonation is that uncanny. Many people, including
Entertainment Weekly, championed Greenwood for lead and/or supporting Oscar
nods and were surprised when he was left out. But the success of the film
is more a casting stunt. David Self's script skillfully converts anecdotes
into actions and converts the sprawling events of 13 of the most documented
days in world history into a comprehensible two and a half hour narrative
flow. Donaldson and editor Conrad Buff (who picked up a Golden Satellite
Award for his work here) work all the angles: mixing film stocks, jump and
dissolve cuts, rapid fire editing during high tension scenes and a cute
trick of fading from black and white to color during a scene which along
with the photo-realism images of Greenwood and Culp often leave the viewer
wondering if they're watching a movie or a newsreel (real tape of Kennedy
speaking is mixed in so skillfully you can't always tell whether it's
Greenwood or Kennedy speaking). Donaldson does not take the potential of
thermal nuclear annihilation lightly and neither does his film. With
frequent legitimate shots of blossoming mushroom clouds (they blew up an
awful lot of nukes in those days), Donaldson constantly reminds us what the
stakes were when the cold war heated up to a near inferno and our two
nations stood eyeball to eyeball hoping someone would have sense enough to
blink.

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